Spindle

Earlier this year, a bunch of Poles ran an IndieGoGo campaign for a new larpwriting web app called “Spindle”. Its plot-based rather than relationship-based, using a theory of larp “quantum” (which probably sounds less stupid / desperate in Polish). There’s a presentation on it here.

One down side is that its pay-to-play for anything over 20 players, but its currently in open Beta, which means you don’t have to pay to use it at all. You can sign up for it here:

http://spindle.pl/

Note that if you use this to write a large larp in the Beta phase, you’ll need to pay them later if you ever want to edit it again. But it will be accessible and you will apparently be able to keep producing handouts for it even from a free account.

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I’ve had a (VERY) quick look at this and tbh I don’t “get” it. I need to look at it in further detail but from your description it seems like I may be approaching it from the wrong direction. I’ve got a Google Doc for a game I’m writing and I’m trying to transfer the characters over - am I supposed to create the plots first, and then the characters, and not the other way round?

How would this work for a game where there aren’t any great overarching plots as such, but just a bunch of characters and the game springs fully(ha! not likely) formed out of the feverish minds of the players?

I’m keen to try Spindle, but I’m unsure if I would work for me either. I alternate between plot first, character first, and theme first, so I like really simple - wiki-like - tools when I write Larps. Which has made me wonder if software like Discourse could work.

It has obvious linking between topics/characters. Subcategories could represent factions/groups. You can wiki posts to make them editable by multiple people. You could jump between characters while writing - making it easy to check links and background on other character sheets. It supports markdown (which for me means I spend more time on the words rather than the formatting). The only thing I can think of that’s missing is a nicely formatted export/ print view…

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